Teen Arrested in Chicago Car-Bomb Plot, Authorities Say
By SUSAN CAREY – 16 September, 2012 – WSJ

An 18-year old Muslim-American from a Chicago suburb was arrested Friday night after attempting to detonate what he believed to be a car bomb outside a crowded bar in downtown Chicago, federal authorities said.

The bomb was a dud supplied by an undercover Federal Bureau of Investigation agent who had the alleged perpetrator under surveillance since earlier this summer, and no one was injured.

Adel Daoud, a U.S. citizen allegedly bent on a jihad mission to kill “hundreds” of people, was formally charged Saturday with two federal criminal counts: attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and attempting to destroy a building with an explosive, according to an FBI affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago.

An FBI spokesman on Sunday said Mr. Daoud is being held without bond in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago, a federal facility. He is scheduled to appear again in federal court on Monday afternoon, at which time he could seek to be released on bond and likely will be represented by a court-appointed attorney or his own lawyer, the FBI spokesman said.

A woman who answered the phone Sunday of a Daoud family in Hillside, Ill., where the defendant lives, said she had no comment. The defendant couldn’t be reached for comment.

According to the FBI affidavit, Mr. Daoud allegedly began using an email account to obtain and distribute information about jihad and the killing of Americans in the fall of 2011. In May of 2012, two undercover FBI agents contacted him online and engaged in electronic conversation about his plans to carry out terrorist attacks.

Another FBI undercover agent entered the scene in July and met with Mr. Daoud a total of six times as the young man planned the attack and looked for locations in Chicago. The choices included shopping malls, concert venues, tourist attractions, movie theaters and bars, the FBI affidavit said. The undercover agent on Sept. 13 showed Mr. Daoud a purported explosive device housed in a green Jeep Cherokee parked in a storage unit. The device, constructed by an FBI bomb technician, was inert.

The defendant allegedly asked the undercover agent to tell the agent’s mosque leader to announce that the attack had been on behalf of al Qaeda. On Friday evening, the two met in the suburbs, drove to downtown Chicago and picked up the Jeep. They then drove to the targeted bar, the location of which the FBI won’t disclose. Mr. Daoud allegedly got out of the jeep, walked about a block away and attempted to denote the car bomb. He was immediately arrested.

“I wanted something that’s… massive,” Mr. Daoud allegedly told the undercover agent, according to the affidavit. “I want something that’s gonna make it in the news like tonight.” …source